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And what has this to do with civilian reactors?
If you actually read the item you linked to you would realize that Mayak/Kyshtym was the Soviet counterpart of Hanford - a hastily built Cold War weapons plant.
If you actually read the article about the Banqiao Dam disaster, the entire basis of this claim, you would see that it was built in response to flooding, not primarily as a hydroelectric project. In other words the dam would have been built even if not a single hydroelectric generator has been installed.
Since the well-funded breeder reactor programs of Japan and France have failed to produce a single power-producing unit despite nearly 30 years of work by both, he may well have saved the U.S. a huge money sink. In the meantime there is no shortage of conventional power reactor fuel: AND at the cost of reprocessed fuel ( far in excess of conventional LEU fuel) it will be much cheaper to extract uranium from seawater, giving a supply good for tens of thousands of years.
Oh, and reprocessing does not decrease the amount of radioactive waste. It massively increases the waste stream by producing large volumes of contaminated reprocessing waste products.
This isn't transportation. It is an unusual resort, a cruise ship in orbit. People go on cruises to enjoy the cruise ship, not to get anywhere. Sure you see some sights also, but that is true of an orbital vacation too - you get amazing views of Earth all the time.
I'm sure they will. If you've go the scratch for the ticket purchase, your reservation will be golden.
(Not to knock the aluminum business -- it is a very useful and vital metal, but it is highly dependent on electricity.)
That is actually the point. It is sometimes called "solid electricity" - its production cost is almost entirely the electricity that goes into it. This fuel cell pack makes use of that efficiently packaged energy. Since you can use the cheapest source of electricity in the world to make the fuel plates, it is very economical.
Swapping in a new plate pack every 1000 miles is likely to much less of a hassle than a nightly charging regimen (if the system has a decent design).
According to Alcoa, the world's largest producer of aluminium, the best smelters use about 13 kilowatt hours (46.8 megajoules) of electrical energy to produce one kilogram of aluminium; the worldwide average is closer to 15 kWh/kg (54 MJ/kg). Each kilogram of aluminum in the battery produces about 8 KWH of energy, so the efficiency from plant to engine is around 60%, maybe a bit lower than charging a battery from house-delivered electricity (10% transmission loss, 80% charging efficiency, 0.9*0.8 = 0.72).
The cost of that electricity though will be the wholesale grid cost, about 3.5 cents/KWH. What do you pay for your electricity (probably three times that and up)?
Aluminum is a good way to export electricity. Iceland does this with its hydropower.
The so-called aluminum-air battery actually consumes water also as part of its fuel. The consumption of water is an equal mass with the aluminum consumed, and that 1000 mile batter pack weighs 25 kg, so it should consume 25 kg of water, or about 7 gallons per 1000 miles. So the water consumption cost will be around 0.6 cents per mile.
Since:
I would say that your notions about hyperinflation are pure fiction.
The fact that you cite two fictional works (a Tom Holt novel, and a rather dull fiction by Paul) as your only support lends credence to this.
*The CSA, not part of the USA at the time, being in rebellion and all, had hyperinflation in the last year of the war. The U.S. had a short war-related very high inflation period in 1864, but it never experienced hyperinflation - where money essentially ceases to have value.
...Doesn't the H1-B guy LIVING IN THE USA have the same cost-of-living handicap? How can he survive with such a smaller salary than the US worker?
By typically being a single individual not raising a family, saving for retirement in this country, nor paying off educational debts incurred in this country. Capische?
India and China are large places, and their people are not corrupted yet with ideas that everyone owes them a fine living.
Right. How dare those American workers think that they deserve a reasonable share of the wealth they create! They have not yet learned, as the Chinese and Indian workers know, that they are techno-serfs who can expect to receive as little as the CEO finds he can pay.
It's worth noting that Asian americans have a higher life expectancy than residents of japan.
Japanese Americans have a higher economic status than the median American, and higher than the median citizen of Japan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income
Since race is strongly correlated with life expectancy, the mere fact of a more diverse population brings US numbers down, even if we handle every racial group better.
When we control for socioeconomic status the race correlation of life expectancy either is drastically reduced or else disappears entirely. You are trying to paint an economic problem the U.S. has (extreme disparity of wealth and serious poverty) which we could attempt to rectify as an inevitable genetic thing that no one can do anything about.
Life expectancy is a poor measure to star with, since it's not closely tied to medical care in particular.
Since it contradicts the considered option of the world medical community you need to at least try to post a link to substantiate such a radical claim.
In fact since 3/4 of the potential years of life lost in the U.S. before the age of 65 are due to medical conditions your claim is nonsense. The link is very strong.*
Social factors are a major cause of premature deaths. Life expectancy at later ages may be more relevant, as medical conditions start taking over causes of death instead of accidents and violence.
The claim is false for those under 65, as well as for those over 65, which are acknowledging here.
The definition of live birth as actually calculated differs from country to country and this has a large impact on numbers. As a way of avoiding those differences in counting live births, I suggest perinatal mortality instead. And, go figure, the US is better than some of the countries that regular infant mortality would suggest would surpass it. The UK (25th) for instance goes from being 2 better than us to 1 worse on rates. It's funny, but the numbers on that wiki link do not correspond to sorty by any of the actual infant mortality numbers. I believe perinatal has it's own landmines, but the time frame immediately surrounding birth is more connected to medical system than from birth to 1.
We do better true, but we are still 24th on the list.
*There is a claim that has been bouncing in the right wing megaphone echo chamber for four years asserting that if you control of accidents and violence U.S. life expectancy jumps to number one. The claim is false and traces to a single miscaptioned table in a report by conservative think tank economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider. The table shows that the U.S. would lead in life expectancy if U.S. life expectancy tracked the life vs GDP trendline of the OECD. In fact it does not, it does far worse - which is exactly the problem that needs to be solved.
Libertarians constantly prattle on about all this oppression of government by its monopoly on force. Yet the only legitimate role they declare for government is to have guns - police and a military to enforce their property rights (which only exist under a system of laws).
Exactly. In that phrase from Thatcher so beloved by the right these days, those compensation boards and those CEOs are playing games with "other people's money".
Wow! You aren't just moving goal posts, you are rewriting the rules of the game!
The shareholders own the company. Of course they pay the salaries. Any CEO compensation comes directly out of their pocket.
By your (il)logic no boss anywhere pays salaries. HR departments will be thrilled.
Some people on the right are utterly determined to defend the most gross abuses of the commercial world.
On-line, adj.: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.